Toshiki Okada

Toshiki (writer/director) was born in Yokohama in 1973 and formed the theatre company chelfitsch in 1997. Since then he has written and directed all of the company’s productions, practicing a distinctive methodology for creating plays, and has come to be known for his use of hyper-colloquial Japanese and unique choreography. In 2005, his play Five Days in March won the prestigious 49th Kishida Drama Award. Okada participated in Toyota Choreography Award 2005 with Air Conditioner, garnering much attention. In September 2005, Okada won the Yokohama Cultural Award/Yokohama Award for Art and Cultural Encouragement. As the representative of his country, he took part in Stuecke’06 International Literature Project and in December of the same year, he presented Enjoy at New National Theatre, Tokyo. He has also served as the director for the 2006-07 Summit, an annual drama festival hosted by the Komaba Agora Theater (General producer, Oriza Hirata). In February of 2007 his collection of novels The End of the Special Time We Were Allowed debuted and was awarded the Kenzaburo Oe Prize. As a director he has directed Beckett’s Cascando for the Tokyo International Arts Festival ~ Beckett Centennial Memorial Festival, and Kobo Abe’s salient work Friends at the Setagaya Public Theater. More recently he also directed a workshop production of Strangeness with local actors at the Itami Ai Hall in Hyogo prefecture, Ghost Youth created through collaboration with students of Obirin University, and wrote a new play called Three Women for director Naoto Takenaka, among other projects. In recent years, he has widely drawn attention not only from the theatre world and the contemporary dance scene, but also from those in fine arts and literature. He has been invited to numerous art centers, museums and festivals such as Nam June Pike Art Center (Seoul), Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), The National Museum of Art (Osaka) and Mori Museum of Art (Tokyo), and Yokohama Triennale. In March 2008, he presented Freetime, a piece co-produced by KUNSTEN FESTIVAL DES ARTS (Brussels), Wiener Festwochen (Vienna), and Festival d’Automne (Paris). In May 2009, New National Theater of Japan commissioned Okada to adapt and direct Dea Loher’s TAETOWIERUNG. As his stories as well as plays have continued to be published in Japan, his works have been translated into many languages and published abroad. Moreover, he has provided scripts for other theatre companies in Japan. In October 2009, Hot Pepper, Air Conditioner, and the Farewell Speech premiered in Berlin, in co-production with Hebbel Am Ufer (Berlin). His newest work Ground and Floor continues to tour throughout Europe and North America.